During boot alsa complains about this missing file, it is located under /etc and not under /var/lib/alsa/, see also http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-555303-highlight-asound+state.html Reproducible: Always
Like I said in the forum this command has to create the file first, if volume state isn't stored at halt: alsactl -f /var/lib/alsa/asound.state store
Yes, looks like the file moved location and if you weren't letting the initscript save state on shutdown, you might have been bitten by this. Sorry for any inconvenience.